Efficiency is very high even for a Silver rated unit and despite of the very high operating temperatures. For 20% to 60% load, efficiency is constantly above 90% and at 40% load it peaks to an impressive 92%. Even with 1050W of load it's close to 89%. Many Gold units would envy those efficiency readings.

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Sounds like Corsair is pulling another HX850/HX750 and marketting 80+ Gold units as 80+ Silver so they don't hurt sales of their AX line.

Unfortunately I can't find the 80+ report for the HX1050 anywhere yet, so I can't confirm that the unit really did test as 80+ Gold, but suspect it did like the HX850/750.

Was hoping for better regulation on 75% + load for its high price though.. oh I dunno.. maybe within 1.5-ish.. but hey its a silver all the time I was looking through it, thought it was gold (serves me right for skipping directly to build quality and regulation).. that 3.3v is kind of funny though.

Since the test here was done av 230V, the efficiency is bound to be a couple of percent higher. Was also surprised this sample did worse regarding voltage reg than Kitguru's unit. I guess it can vary depending in the sample.

Another little fact about how the 80+ rating goes, the OEM gives the 80+ guys a very highly cherry picked unit for them to test.

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I don't disagree that 25°C is not a opertating temp that the PSU will see. But that doesn't matter, the 80+ standard says 25° so that is the standard that is used with all PSUs. The units passed 80+ Gold, period. If you don't like the fact that it was at 25° then go complain to the people who standardized the certification tests.

And the platform rating is different than the PSU rating in this case because Corsair modifies the PSU from the reference platform, so the PSU must be retested again. Some manufacturers that don't modify the reference platform any, and just reuse the reference certfication. However, Corsair modifies the platform from reference and hance must recertify their units. This is why the CX series was originally not 80+ certified, and then the V2s came out and did pass 80+. The V2s were based on the same platform as the original CX V1s, in fact almost all the components were identical, but a minor change allowed them to hit 80+.

As for cherry picked units, that does happen, but generally not with reputable companies such as Corsair. Which is obvious since the review samples all score the same or greater efficiency than they are rated for.

So the units definitely are 80+ Gold units, passing the standards set by the 80+ people, however unrealistic those standard are, those are the standards that every unit that is certified must follow. So the only reason that makes sense for why they are marketted as 80+ silver is so they don't hurt the sales of the more expensive AX series.